Ten openly celebratory new stories, in a fifth collection, from the prolific Cooper (In Search of Satisfaction, 1994, etc.). With her characteristic wit and aplomband effortless colloquial stylethe author leads her high-spirited, modern-day heroines on their hard (but usually rewarding) life's journeys. Women all need the same thing, Cooper asserts time and again: to strike a critical balance between finding love and findingand keepingthemselves. And though these protagonists make mistakes and fall often into traps set for women since the beginning of time, they're eventually offered redemption and indeed happiness by dint of their own learned wisdom. ``Femme Fatale'' plays with the traditional meaning of that phrase as Darlin' Roscoe's version of Everywoman undergoes a radical transformation for the better. In ``The Way It Is,'' Melody learns after losing the love of her life that it's more-than-OK to pass up Mr. So-So even if it means holding out all alone for Mr. Right. The inspirational ``Yellow House Road'' features MLee (so named by a mother who had 13 children and no time to learn to spell), who leaves her lazy husband to discover what she wants out of lifeand learns that just by trying she ``can DO things by herself, for herself.'' But Cooper is no full-fledged Pollyanna: ``Sure Is a Shame'' concerns Inez and her sorry sister Gartha, two women who made bad choices and couldn't (or wouldn't) escape them; ``A Will and a Way'' has a tragic loss at its center, one not adequately compensated for by its unsatisfying end. Overall, though, the cumulative experiences of these invincible, irrepressible women create an unforgettable, uplifting collection. Funny, real, warm, and right on the money: stories from a gifted author that help to do womankind proud. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-46787-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in...
Huzzah! Martin (The Ice Dragon, 2014, etc.) delivers just what fans have been waiting for: stirring tales of the founding of the Targaryen line.
Duncan—Dunk for short—has his hapless moments. He’s big, nearly gigantic, “hugely tall for his age, a shambling, shaggy, big-boned boy of sixteen or seventeen.” Uncertain of himself, clumsy, and alone in the world, he has every one of the makings of a hero, if only events will turn in that direction. They do, courtesy of a tiny boy who steals into the “hedge knight” Dunk’s life and eventually reveals a name to match that of Ser Duncan the Tall—an altogether better name, at that, than Duncan of Flea Bottom would have been. Egg, as the squire calls himself, has a strange light about him, as if he will be destined to go on to better things, as indeed he will. Reminiscent of a simpler Arthur Rackham, the illustrations capture that light, as they do the growing friendship between Dunk and Egg—think Manute Bol and Muggsy Bogues, if your knowledge of basketball matches your interest in fantasy. This being Martin, that friendship will not be without its fraught moments, its dangers and double crosses and knightly politics. There are plenty of goopily violent episodes as well, from jousts (“this time Lord Leo Tyrell aimed his point so expertly he ripped the Grey Lion’s helm cleanly off his head”) to medieval torture (“Egg…used the hat to fan away the flies. There were hundreds crawling on the dead men, and more drifting lazily through the still, hot air.”). Throughout, Martin delivers thoughtful foreshadowing of the themes and lineages that will populate his Ice and Fire series, in which Egg, it turns out, is much less fragile than he seems.
As Tolkien had his Silmarillion, so Martin has this trilogy of foundational tales. They succeed on their own, but in addition, they succeed in making fans want more—and with luck, Martin will oblige them with more of these early yarns.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-345-53348-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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